Nine Eleven (#Wattys2015)

Chapter 2

It lay on top of the kitchen table. The letter. The cozy apartment room in black silence. The morning. The sun had yet to shine its face and night hung still its sullen drapes around the city. New York City. Upper West side.

The translucent lights in her kitchen hung with silver lining; the stained wood table made the collaboration of wine, bread, and dirty plates scattered across the table. The letter lay underneath the mess.

Remnants of last night.

Lights out, the sink filled with purple wine, and empty wine glasses filled with tiny circles of wine-blood reluctantly at the bottom of two cups. Two glasses.

The apartment was dead quiet.

Except for the unrelenting sound of the city quaking through the broad windows, the small place was as quiet as a coffin stuck in the face of the earth.

Even the bedroom in the place lay still. Darkness all around. She lay in bed, still dreaming of nights to come. Edith. And her apartment expectantly waiting for her to get up. The letter lay patiently still with words of motion still messy on her kitchen table.

5:00 A.M.

She wouldn't have to wake up, but she did.

With a tussle in the sheets, loud squeaks in the mattress, and a laborious yawn the girl woke up. She tossed the sheets and shifted her feet over the side of the bed. Everything was blurry, so she kept her eyes closed.

She walks to her empty restroom routinely: eyes still shut. She shuffles inside and slams the door behind her. A light appears under the door. Five minutes pass, the sound of the faucet awakes the silence, and she opens the restroom door and walks out.

Still not ready for work, she decides to go the dining room. She wanted to be reminded of last night.

She stands at the entrance to the room, she sees the empty wine bottles open to the conscious air; the bread crumbs scattered aimlessly across the long table; and one half eaten loaf lain atop a ceramic plate. Chairs misplaced. And brightly colored bouquet of autumn flowers snuggled tightly in paper wrapping. Petals lie under the bouquet.

Edith stares through squinting eyes and a wide-spread smile. She turns on the light.

Which makes the mess is even more apparent-but that only seems to make her happier. She starts to clean up and notices the letter slipped at the corner of the table. She picks it up.

One sheet of paper. A note from her boyfriend written on the back side of an old light bill. She recognized his handwriting. She turns it over and reads what was written there in pen:

"Baby,

I couldn't spend enough time with you. Although I'm human, everything inside me wishes I wasn't, that I could be perfect, so I could love you more. So you can have what you truly deserve. When I woke up today beside you, I saw both the chords of my both past and my future tie into one knot-a knot that tied my life to you. I know that I was made to hold you in my arms, to have you safe in my protection. In my mind. In my heart. No matter how frail I may be, how imperfect, how dumb at times, I only ask that you bear with me, and know that my goal in life is to make you happy, to make you whole, and to make you mine-mine alone. Today I'll miss you, but know that I'll see you soon, and that there is no place I'd rather be than by your side. I love you.

-Yours"

She hadn't realized that she had sat down. So distracted.

Smiling, she looked up. She saw the clock on the wall read 5:30AM. She relented having to leave her ruminations. But she had to. She had to get ready for work. Without cleaning anything on the table, she got up from the chair and went to her bedroom. She didn't make her bed or clean up the scattered clothes lying lifeless on the ground, but she got undressed.

She wondered what it looked like when Orlando, her boyfriend, left the letter on the table. She knew that he woke up way before she did for work, she just wondered when and how he wrote the letter. She thought aloud: "he must have woken up extra early to write that,"she sighed.

The image of her blonde lover moving across the darkness of her apartment subtly sitting at the table, and writing the ink of his heart on the back of her light bill send all sorts of fire inside her heart. She imagined him with his shirt off for some reason, writing the letter, pacing quickly, moving about the living room and kitchen, grabbing his clothes and keys, then leaving. Of course not without the soft kiss he'd leave wet and warm on her ivory forehead. She didn't feel him leave last night, nor hear him move, nor kiss her as he left.

She loved him. That was obvious. She wondered what that meant though, and she thought of how he loved her, his affections, and when or if they'd ever expire. She thought aloud, moving swiftly and loudly through her dim closet looking for clothes to wear, trying to get ready:

"Would he love me like this always? Why? He's gonna care less about me. Maybe. Maybe not. What does it matter anyway-it doesn't? He loves me today and today I love him back. He takes care of me today and today I take care of him back. And the dreadful night that he forgets that sound of love he used to sing, I won't remind him. I'll stay silent and wanting. We all change, and I can only enjoy what I have today-never what I won't have tomorrow. I'll find tomorrow. Or he'll find us, and Orlando and I will be okay. Wherever stony ground of love, or new pleasure we'll be building on. Whenever we marry-because I'm sure I will end up with him-"

She buttons one button on her suit jacket, scraps her torso of lint, and reaches into the bottom of the open closet in front of her for her heels. Black.

"Seeing all that wine and bread only reminds me of how the Romans used to feast,"she continued, "bread, wine. Happiness. Completely Bacchian-not that that's a bad thing. If we were Roman Orlando would be-Apollo-and I'd be-"

She steps in front of the mirror mid-sentence. She combs her fingers quickly through her hair. She puts it up in a bun.

"Aphrodite!,"she says into the emptiness of the dim apartment.

"The goddess of love. Ha. What would God say about that. Eden wasn't the princess of love. She was perfect I imagine, more perfect than I'll ever be, but no Venus. I'd be a Venus yet. Me and Apollo. No dreadful serpent to coax me and steal my glory."

She grabs her purse, puts her cellphone inside, grabs her keys from the key rack, turns out the lights; and with her heels in her right hand she starts walking out the door.

She screams into the closed space. The apartment doesn't echo, no reverb to her loud scream, no friend to the sound of Edith yelling. She pulls a bar stool from the bar and sits down. She pulls her foot up quickly to find where the piece of glass. She was bleeding. One short line of blood runs down her naked heel.

"How did that get there?,"she said aloud, "uh, I'm bleeding!"She finds the piece of glass, turns on the lights, then hops down her hallway into her bathroom; she opens the medicine cabinet, grabs her tweezers, and sits on her bed. She quickly takes out the shard of glass. A drop of hot blood falls on the carpet. She looks up at a long full body mirror, she smiles and says aloud: "I'm late. Damn piece of glass!-well I bruised it's head-"